The Zombie Apocolypse, Courtesy of the Mobile Phone.

As I write this, I am on a plane thirty-three thousand feet off the ground, somewhere between Florida and Pennsylvania. You’re probably wondering what any of my plane flight has to do with zombies. Fear not, my faithful fans. I can assure you that I’ll tie it all together.

I’ll be up front and say that I don’t watch zombie shows that are currently running on any one of a number of cable channels. I tend to shy away from this kind of entertainment. I know these shows are quite popular but they aren’t my cup of tea.

Now, where was I?. Oh yes…the reason I’m writing this in the first place.

My wife and I are returning from a ‘just the two of us’ trip to the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. I’ll start by saying that the trip was awesome and we had an awesome time (especially the time spent at the hotel pool).

I also want to say that it was crowded. There were crowds everywhere; from the hotel to each of the two parks that we went to. The hotel was hosting two different conferences so that wasn’t fun for a few days. And the parks were crowded with kids of all ages. My first thought was “Why are they in school? It’s the first week of May, for crying out loud!”

Well, we came to find that there were a number of teens and tweens because there was a cheer-leading competition in the area. Oh, goody…

And, out of all of the kids who were in the park, many of them were mindlessly staring at their mobile phones. My wife and I had the unfortunate opportunity to sit next to a couple of young girls who spend the entire ‘It’s a Small World’ ride on their phones. In fact, one of them was so adept that it looked like she could have been working the virtual screen in ‘The Minority Report.’

Have we become so integrated with and dependent on technology that we are lost without it? I’m older so I grew up in a time when we didn’t have these fancy phones that can get you out on the interwebs or download your email. I grew up in a much simpler time when you actually sat through a ride and enjoyed it instead of trying to figure out what Justin Bieber is up to next (is he even still around?)

Grant it, I am not against technology. It does have it usefulness. But at what price? We have become mindless people who can’t walk outside without staring at Facebook or checking any one of a number of text messages that they just received.

I think the phrase ‘Wake up and smell the coffee’ is quite apropos. Put the device down and look at the world around you. Take it all in. It’s all of God’s beauty and majesty right in front of you. Take some time to appreciate it.

Of course, if Apple develops a phone that can also generate smells, then people won’t have to go too far to smell the coffee.